broadband speeds

A few weeks back (19th March), I asked you guys to vote in a poll asking who your ISP (Internet Service Provider [The people that give you internet]) was. Admittedly, I didn’t expect a large response considering it may seem a bit of a “privacy scare”, although, the reality is, almost any website you visit, the owner can detect your ISP. Unless they’re using a proxy gate or something – Like I am with CloudFlare. But then that’s a different story.

The reason I did ask this though, is because I wanted to see how many people, were, or might be, “being conned”. You see, when we sign up for Broadband, we mainly see the big numbers and think “Wow! That’s great – It’s cheap too”. Take a look at this following advertisement. – It’s fairly new, so it’s been made more clearer, but it’s no longer allowed due to OFCOMs standards.

Advertisement for BT Business Broadband

Imagine you’re looking at that from a distance, or driving past in a car, the likely hood you’ll see the term “up to”, very slim. Which is where most of us become “conned”. Now after looking at the poll results;

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I can instantly tell that most of you are liable to being conned. How can I tell this? Well, you see most broadband providers provide you broadband down your phone line – which is you need a phone line. These cables are old, copper, and probably slightly rusty. Your provider may be beaming that speed out to you, but by the time you’ve received it your end, it would have lost speed – not to mention if you live further away, it has longer to travel. I don’t know about other countries, but I know that in the UK the reliable broadband company for speed is Virgin Broadband, because they use fibre optic cables to send your broadband – which is why you don’t need a phone line. BT have also recently started to use fibre optic cables.

So, if you’re being conned, what can you do? Well, you could run a speed test (via speedtest.net) and that will give you the actual speed you’re getting. You could also call up your ISP, ask them why it’s so slow, if you can speed it up, but the likely hood will be they can’t – I’ve been there myself. If you really want the speed your actually paying for, I would recommend calling around, see which broadband provider can give you the fastest speed. Most companies have an idea of the average speed you’ll get – even if it is 20mb/s your paying for.

My result from speedtest.net. We pay for 10mb/s download speed and 1mb/s upload speed with Virgin Broadband.